Provisioning radio-based networks on demand

ABSTRACT

Disclosed are various embodiments for provisioning radio-based networks on demand. In one embodiment, a request to provision a radio-based network to cover an area is received. At least one radio access network operated by at least one communication service provider that covers the area is determined. A capacity is provisioned in the radio access network(s) for the radio-based network to cover the area. At least a portion of a core network is provisioned for the radio-based network in a cloud provider network.

BACKGROUND

5G is the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellularnetworks, which is planned eventually to take the place of thefourth-generation (4G) standard of Long-Term Evolution (LTE). 5Gtechnology will offer greatly increased bandwidth, thereby broadeningthe cellular market beyond smartphones to provide last-mile connectivityto desktops, set-top boxes, laptops, Internet of Things (IoT) devices,and so on. Some 5G cells may employ frequency spectrum similar to thatof 4G, while other 5G cells may employ frequency spectrum in themillimeter wave band. Cells in the millimeter wave band will have arelatively small coverage area but will offer much higher throughputthan 4G.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Many aspects of the present disclosure can be better understood withreference to the following drawings. The components in the drawings arenot necessarily to scale, with emphasis instead being placed uponclearly illustrating the principles of the disclosure. Moreover, in thedrawings, like reference numerals designate corresponding partsthroughout the several views.

FIG. 1A is a drawing of an example of a communication network that isdeployed and managed according to various embodiments of the presentdisclosure.

FIG. 1B is an example of a radio-based network deployed in accordancewith various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 1C is an example of a radio-based network deployed to cover a routein accordance with various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 2A illustrates an example of a networked environment including acloud provider network and further including various provider substrateextensions of the cloud provider network, which may be used in variouslocations within the communication network of FIG. 1 , according to someembodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 2B depicts an example of cellularization and geographicdistribution of the communication network of FIG. 1 for providing highlyavailable user plane functions (UPFs).

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of the networked environment of FIG. 2Aincluding geographically dispersed provider substrate extensionsaccording to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 4 is a schematic block diagram of the networked environment of FIG.2A according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIGS. 5-7 are flowcharts illustrating examples of functionalityimplemented as portions of a radio-based network management serviceexecuted in a computing environment in the networked environment of FIG.4 according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 8 is a schematic block diagram that provides one exampleillustration of a computing environment employed in the networkedenvironment of FIG. 4 according to various embodiments of the presentdisclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present disclosure relates to dynamic provisioning of radio-basednetworks on demand. For a variety of reasons, organizations may wish toprovision private radio-based networks. For example, a school system maywish to deploy a private radio-based network to cover multiple schoolcampuses, or an enterprise may seek to deploy a private radio-basednetwork to cover one or more warehouse locations. However, build-out ofa private radio-based network may be both costly and time consuming.Moreover, the organization's network requirements may change over time,leaving an existing private radio-based network underperforming and inneed of an upgrade with additional equipment, or conversely, saddlingthe organization with unnecessary expenses due to an underutilized andoverprovisioned private radio-based network. In addition, the networkaccess needs of an organization may be temporary in an area or subjectto a schedule that results in times of little to no network accessrequirements in the area, but heavy demands for a mission-criticalnetwork application at other times.

Meanwhile, the area in which the organization seeks radio-based networkconnectivity may be served by a number of incumbent communicationservice providers. The existing 4G or 5G radio access networks of thecommunication service providers are typically overprovisioned and offerample capacity for new customers. Nonetheless, an organization may seekto avoid using established communication service providers for reasonssuch as a single provider may not cover all sites utilized by theorganization, the providers may require long-term contracts, theproviders' ability to meet quality-of-service or security requirementsare limited, the providers' charges are too high, and other reasons.Although a communication service provider may monetize its underutilizedcapacity by allowing a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to resellaccess, MVNOs are manually configured in response to long-termagreements and lack the ability to provide configurablequality-of-service or meet other requirements dynamically in response tocustomers' changing needs.

Various embodiments of the present disclosure introduce radio-basednetworks that are provisioned dynamically on demand leveraging existingradio access network infrastructure of one or more communication serviceproviders. As will be described, an organization may create aradio-based network that uses the radio access network of a firstcommunication service provider in a first area and the radio accessnetwork of a second communication service provider in a second area, orperhaps simultaneously the radio access networks of both communicationservice providers in the same area in order to meet quality-of-servicerequirements.

The radio-based network may use a core network infrastructure that isprovisioned dynamically and used in conjunction with a plurality ofdifferent radio access networks operated by a plurality of communicationservice providers. While the radio-based networks are provisionedon-demand, the radio-based networks may also be scaled up or down orterminated dynamically, thereby providing organizations with thecapability to create an ephemeral radio-based network that may existduring a particular time period or periodically according to a schedule.Further, cell sites may be added to or removed from the radio-basednetwork dynamically on demand. In various scenarios, an organization maycreate either a private radio-based network for internal use only or aradio-based network open to third-party customers using embodiments ofthe present disclosure.

Previous deployments of radio-based networks have relied upon manualdeployment and configuration at each step of the process. This proved tobe extremely time consuming and expensive. Further, in previousgenerations, software was inherently tied to vendor-specific hardware,thereby preventing customers from deploying alternative software. Bycontrast, with 5G, hardware is decoupled from the software stack, whichallows more flexibility, and allows components of the radio-basednetwork to be executed on cloud provider infrastructure. Using a clouddelivery model for a radio-based network, such as a 5G network, canfacilitate handling network traffic from hundreds up to billions ofconnected devices and compute-intensive applications, while deliveringfaster speeds, lower latency, and more capacity than other types ofnetworks.

Historically, enterprises have had to choose between performance andprice when evaluating their enterprise connectivity solutions. Cellularnetworks may offer high performance, great indoor and outdoor coverageand advanced Quality of Service (QoS) connectivity features, but privatecellular networks can be expensive and complex to manage. While Ethernetand Wi-Fi require less upfront investment and are easier to manage,enterprises often find that they can be less reliable, require a lot ofwork to get the best coverage, and do not offer QoS features such asguaranteed bit rate, latency and reliability.

Enterprises can freely deploy various 5G devices and sensors across theenterprise—factory floors, warehouses, lobbies, and communicationscenters—and manage these devices, enroll users, and assign QoS from amanagement console. With the disclosed technology, customers can assignconstant bit rate throughput to all their devices (such as cameras,sensors, or IoT devices), reliable low latency connection to devicesrunning on factory floors, and broadband connectivity to all handhelddevices. The disclosed service can manage all the software needed todeliver connectivity that meets the specified constraints andrequirements. This enables an entirely new set of applications that havestrict QoS or high IoT device density requirements that traditionallyhave not been able to run on Wi-Fi networks. Further, the disclosedservice can provide application development application programminginterfaces (APIs) that expose and manage 5G capabilities like QoS,enabling customers to build applications that can fully utilize thelatency and bandwidth capabilities of their network without having tounderstand the details of the network.

Additionally, the disclosed service can provide a private zone to runlocal applications within a cloud provider network. This private zonecan be connected to and effectively part of a broader regional zone, andallows the customer to manage the private zone using the same APIs andtools as used in the cloud provider network. Like an availability zone,the private zone can be assigned a virtual private network subnet. AnAPI can be used to create and assign subnets to all zones that thecustomer wishes to use, including the private zone and existing otherzones. A management console may offer a simplified process for creatinga private zone. Virtual machine instances and containers can be launchedin the private zone just as in regional zones. Customers can configure anetwork gateway to define routes, assign IP addresses, set up networkaddress translation (NAT), and so forth. Automatic scaling can be usedto scale the capacity of virtual machine instances or containers asneeded in the private zone. The same management and authentication APIsof the cloud provider network can be used within the private zone. Insome cases, since cloud services available in the regional zone can beaccessed remotely from private zones over a secure connection, thesecloud services can be accessed without having to upgrade or modify thelocal deployment.

Various embodiments of the present disclosure may also bring the conceptof elasticity and utility computing from the cloud computing model toradio-based networks and associated core networks. For example, thedisclosed techniques can run core and radio access network functions andassociated control plane management functions on cloud providerinfrastructure, creating a cloud native core network and/or a cloudnative radio access network (RAN). Such core and RAN network functionscan be based on the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)specifications in some implementations. By providing a cloud-nativeradio-based network, a customer may dynamically scale its radio-basednetwork based on utilization, latency requirements, and/or otherfactors. Customers may also configure thresholds to receive alertsrelating to radio-based network usage and excess capacity usage of theirprovisioned infrastructure, in order to more effectively manageprovisioning of new infrastructure or deprovisioning of existinginfrastructure based on their dynamic networking and workloadrequirements.

As one skilled in the art will appreciate in light of this disclosure,certain embodiments may be capable of achieving certain advantages,including some or all of the following: (1) improving the userexperience by allowing organizations to deploy their own radio-basednetworks in a largely automated way; (2) improving flexibility incomputer systems by allowing computing hardware previously dedicated tonetwork functions in radio-based networks and associated core networksto be repurposed for other applications; (3) improving efficiency incomputer systems by allowing for increased utilization of existing RANinfrastructure; (4) improving flexibility in computer systems byallowing radio-based networks to be created and/or terminateddynamically, on demand or according to a schedule; (5) improving theperformance and management of radio-based networks by monitoringperformance metrics and adding computing capacity or other RANs asneeded to maintain acceptable performance; (6) improving the scalabilityand overall performance of a radio-based network by transferring networkfunctions previously provided by proprietary hardware to virtual machineinstances operated by a cloud computing provider with elasticity under autility computing model; (7) reducing latency in a radio-based networkby transferring network functions to virtual machine instances executedon computing devices of a cloud service provider at a cell site; and soforth.

Among the benefits of the present disclosure is the ability to deployand chain network functions together to deliver an end-to-end servicethat meets specified constraints and requirements. According to thepresent disclosure, network functions organized into microservices worktogether to provide end-to-end connectivity. One set of networkfunctions are part of a radio network, running in cell towers andperforming wireless signal to IP conversion. Other network functions runin large data centers performing subscriber related business logic androuting IP traffic to the internet and back. For applications to use thenew capabilities of 5G such as low latency communication and reservedbandwidth, both of these types of network functions need to worktogether to appropriately schedule and reserve wireless spectrum, andperform real time compute and data processing. The presently disclosedtechniques provide edge location hardware (as described further below)integrated with network functions that run across the entire network,from cell sites to Internet break-outs, and orchestrate the networkfunctions to meet required Quality of Service (QoS) constraints. Thisenables an entirely new set of applications that have strict QoSrequirements, from factory-based Internet of Things (IoT), to augmentedreality (AR), to virtual reality (VR), to game streaming, to autonomousnavigation support for connected vehicles, that previously could not runon a mobile network.

The described “elastic 5G” service provides and manages all of thehardware, software and network functions, required to build a network.In some embodiments, the network functions may be developed and managedby the cloud service provider; however, the described control plane canmanage network functions across a range of providers, so that customerscan use a single set of APIs to call and manage their choice of networkfunctions on cloud infrastructure. The elastic 5G service beneficiallyautomates the creation of an end-to-end 5G network, from hardware tonetwork functions thus reducing the time to deploy and the operationalcost of operating the network. By providing APIs that expose networkcapabilities, the disclosed elastic 5G service enables applications tosimply specify the desired QoS as constraints and then deploys andchains the network functions together to deliver an end-to-end servicethat meets the specified requirements, thus making it possible to easilybuild new applications.

The present disclosure describes embodiments relating to the creationand management of a cloud native 5G core and/or a cloud native 5G RAN,and associated control plane components. Cloud native refers to anapproach to building and running applications that exploits theadvantages of the cloud computing delivery model such as dynamicscalability, distributed computing, and high availability (includinggeographic distribution, redundancy, and failover). Cloud native refersto how these applications are created and deployed to be suitable fordeployment in a public cloud. While cloud native applications can be(and often are) run in the public cloud, they also can be run in anon-premises data center. Some cloud native applications can becontainerized, for example, having different parts, functions, orsubunits of the application packaged in their own containers, which canbe dynamically orchestrated so that each part is actively scheduled andmanaged to optimize resource utilization. These containerizedapplications can be architected using a microservices architecture toincrease the overall agility and maintainability of the applications.

In a microservices architecture, an application is arranged as acollection of smaller subunits (“microservices”) that can be deployedand scaled independently from one another, and which can communicatewith one another over a network. These microservices are typicallyfine-grained, in that they have specific technical and functionalgranularity, and often implement lightweight communications protocols.The microservices of an application can perform different functions fromone another, can be independently deployable, and may use differentprogramming languages, databases, and hardware/software environmentsfrom one another. Decomposing an application into smaller servicesbeneficially improves modularity of the application, enables replacementof individual microservices as needed, and parallelizes development byenabling teams to develop, deploy, and maintain their microservicesindependently from one another. A microservice may be deployed using avirtual machine, container, or serverless function, in some examples.The disclosed core and RAN software may follow a microservicesarchitecture such that the described radio-based networks are composedof independent subunits that can be deployed and scaled on demand.

Turning now to FIG. 1A, shown is an example of a communication network100 that is deployed and managed according to various embodiments of thepresent disclosure. The communication network 100 includes a radio-basednetwork (RBN) 103, which may correspond to a cellular network such as afourth-generation (4G) Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network, afifth-generation (5G) network, a 4G-5G hybrid core with both 4G and 5GRANs, or another network that provides wireless network access. Theradio-based network 103 may be operated by a cloud service provider foran enterprise, a non-profit, a school system, a governmental entity orother organization. Although referred to as a private network, theradio-based network 103 may use private network addresses or publicnetwork addresses in various embodiments.

Various deployments of the radio-based network 103 can include one ormore of a core network and a RAN network, as well as a control plane forrunning the core and/or RAN network on cloud provider infrastructure. Asdescribed above, these components can be developed in a cloud nativefashion, for example using a microservices architecture, such thatcentralized control and distributed processing is used to scale trafficand transactions efficiently. These components may be based on the 3GPPspecifications by following an application architecture in which controlplane and user plane processing is separated (CUPS Architecture).

The radio-based network 103 provides wireless network access to aplurality of wireless devices 106, which may be mobile devices or fixedlocation devices. In various examples, the wireless devices 106 mayinclude smartphones, connected vehicles, IoT devices, sensors, machinery(such as in a manufacturing facility), hotspots, and other devices. Thewireless devices 106 are sometimes referred to as user equipment (UE) orcustomer premises equipment (CPE).

The radio-based network 103 can include capacity provisioned on one ormore radio access networks (RANs) that provide the wireless networkaccess to the plurality of wireless devices 106 through a plurality ofcells 109. The RANs may be operated by different communication serviceproviders. Each of the cells 109 may be equipped with one or moreantennas and one or more radio units that send and receive wireless datasignals to and from the wireless devices 106. The antennas may beconfigured for one or more frequency bands, and the radio units may alsobe frequency agile or frequency adjustable. The antennas may beassociated with a certain gain or beamwidth in order to focus a signalin a particular direction or azimuthal range, potentially allowing reuseof frequencies in a different direction. Further, the antennas may behorizontally, vertically, or circularly polarized. In some examples, aradio unit may utilize multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) technologyto send and receive signals. As such, the RAN implements a radio accesstechnology to enable radio connection with wireless devices 106, andprovides connection with the radio-based network's core network.Components of the RAN include a base station and antennas that cover agiven physical area, as well as required core network items for managingconnections to the RAN.

Data traffic is often routed through a fiber transport networkconsisting of multiple hops of layer 3 routers (e.g., at aggregationsites) to the core network. The core network is typically housed in oneor more data centers. The core network typically aggregates data trafficfrom end devices, authenticates subscribers and devices, appliespersonalized policies, and manages the mobility of the devices beforerouting the traffic to operator services or the Internet. A 5G Core forexample can be decomposed into a number of microservice elements withcontrol and user plane separation. Rather than physical networkelements, a 5G Core can comprise virtualized, software-based networkfunctions (deployed for example as microservices) and can therefore beinstantiated within Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) cloudinfrastructures. The network functions of the core network can include aUser Plane Function (UPF), Access and Mobility Management Function(AMF), and Session Management Function (SMF), described in more detailbelow. For data traffic destined for locations outside of thecommunication network 100, network functions typically include afirewall through which traffic can enter or leave the communicationnetwork 100 to external networks such as the Internet or a cloudprovider network. Note that in some embodiments, the communicationnetwork 100 can include facilities to permit traffic to enter or leavefrom sites further downstream from the core network (e.g., at anaggregation site or radio-based network 103).

The UPF provides an interconnect point between the mobile infrastructureand the Data Network (DN), i.e. encapsulation and decapsulation ofGeneral Packet Radio Service (GPRS) tunneling protocol for the userplane (GTP-U). The UPF can also provide a session anchor point forproviding mobility within the RAN, including sending one or more endmarker packets to the RAN base stations. The UPF can also handle packetrouting and forwarding, including directing flows to specific datanetworks based on traffic matching filters. Another feature of the UPFincludes per-flow or per-application QoS handling, including transportlevel packet marking for uplink (UL) and downlink (DL), and ratelimiting. The UPF can be implemented as a cloud native network functionusing modern microservices methodologies, for example being deployablewithin a serverless framework (which abstracts away the underlyinginfrastructure that code runs on via a managed service).

The AMF can receive the connection and session information from thewireless devices 106 or the RAN and can handle connection and mobilitymanagement tasks. For example, the AMF can manage handovers between basestations in the RAN. In some examples the AMF can be considered as theaccess point to the 5G core, by terminating certain RAN control planeand wireless device 106 traffic. The AMF can also implement cipheringand integrity protection algorithms.

The SMF can handle session establishment or modification, for example bycreating, updating and removing Protocol Data Unit (PDU) sessions andmanaging session context within the UPF. The SMF can also implementDynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and IP Address Management(IPAM). The SMF can be implemented as a cloud native network functionusing modern microservices methodologies.

Various network functions to implement the radio-based network 103 maybe deployed in distributed computing devices 112, which may correspondto general-purpose computing devices configured to perform the networkfunctions. For example, the distributed computing devices 112 mayexecute one or more virtual machine instances that are configured inturn to execute one or more services that perform the network functions.In one embodiment, the distributed computing devices 112 are ruggedizedmachines that are deployed at each cell site.

By contrast, one or more centralized computing devices 115 may performvarious network functions at a central site operated by the customer.For example, the centralized computing devices 115 may be centrallylocated on premises of the customer in a conditioned server room. Thecentralized computing devices 115 may execute one or more virtualmachine instances that are configured in turn to execute one or moreservices that perform the network functions.

In one or more embodiments, network traffic from the radio-based network103 is backhauled to one or more core computing devices 118 that may belocated at one or more data centers situated remotely from thecustomer's site. The core computing devices 118 may also perform variousnetwork functions, including routing network traffic to and from thenetwork 121, which may correspond to the Internet and/or other externalpublic or private networks. The core computing devices 118 may performfunctionality related to the management of the communication network 100(e.g., billing, mobility management, etc.) and transport functionalityto relay traffic between the communication network 100 and othernetworks.

Moving on to FIG. 1B, shown is an example of a radio-based network 150deployed in accordance with one or more embodiments. The radio-basednetwork 150 is deployed to cover a particular area 151 using a pluralityof cells 153 from a plurality of RANs associated with a plurality ofcommunication service providers. In this example, the largest quantityof cells 153 are provisioned from a first RAN operated by a firstcommunication service provider. The cells 153 generally provideoverlapping coverage of the bulk of the area 151. However, the cells 153may have one or more coverage gaps or dead zones that do not provideadequate coverage within the area 151. As illustrated, the radio-basednetwork 150 may include a cell 156 from a second RAN operated by asecond communication service provider in order to provide coverage inthis gap area. In other examples, cells from different RANs may be addedto provide additional overlapping coverage, particularly to provideimproved service to user devices that are capable of utilizing signalsfrom different RANs simultaneously.

Continuing to FIG. 1C, shown is an example of a radio-based network 160deployed to cover a route 161 in accordance with various embodiments.For example, an organization may have a vehicle that is scheduled totravel along a route 161, either once or periodically. As will bedescribed, cells 163 a, 163 b, 163 c, and so on, from one or more RANs,may have capacity allocated to the radio-based network 160 in order toprovide service to the vehicle and/or one or more user devices withinthe vehicle while on the route 161. This differs from ordinary cellhandoff in that the radio-based network 160 is created or modified, andmultiple user devices may utilize the coverage of the allocated cells163 of the radio-based network 160.

In one embodiment, the capacity of the cells 163 may be allocatedephemerally, such that the allocation is released or terminated once avehicle passes by or according to a schedule. As a non-limiting example,capacity may be allocated in only three cells 163 at a time, whereuponthe capacity is continuously released from passed cells 163 andallocated in upcoming cells 163, such that there is no gap in coveragefor the vehicle but unused capacity allocations are minimized. Inanother embodiment, the capacity of the cells 163 may remain allocateduntil a termination request is received from the customer.

FIG. 2A illustrates an example of a networked environment 200 includinga cloud provider network 203 and further including various providersubstrate extensions of the cloud provider network 203, which may beused in combination with on-premise customer deployments within thecommunication network 100 of FIG. 1A, according to some embodiments. Acloud provider network 203 (sometimes referred to simply as a “cloud”)refers to a pool of network-accessible computing resources (such ascompute, storage, and networking resources, applications, and services),which may be virtualized or bare-metal. The cloud can provideconvenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurablecomputing resources that can be programmatically provisioned andreleased in response to customer commands. These resources can bedynamically provisioned and reconfigured to adjust to variable load.Cloud computing can thus be considered as both the applicationsdelivered as services over a publicly accessible network (e.g., theInternet, a cellular communication network) and the hardware andsoftware in cloud provider data centers that provide those services.

The cloud provider network 203 can provide on-demand, scalable computingplatforms to users through a network, for example, allowing users tohave at their disposal scalable “virtual computing devices” via theiruse of the compute servers (which provide compute instances via theusage of one or both of central processing units (CPUs) and graphicsprocessing units (GPUs), optionally with local storage) and block storeservers (which provide virtualized persistent block storage fordesignated compute instances). These virtual computing devices haveattributes of a personal computing device including hardware (varioustypes of processors, local memory, random access memory (RAM),hard-disk, and/or solid-state drive (SSD) storage), a choice ofoperating systems, networking capabilities, and pre-loaded applicationsoftware. Each virtual computing device may also virtualize its consoleinput and output (e.g., keyboard, display, and mouse). Thisvirtualization allows users to connect to their virtual computing deviceusing a computer application such as a browser, API, softwaredevelopment kit (SDK), or the like, in order to configure and use theirvirtual computing device just as they would a personal computing device.Unlike personal computing devices, which possess a fixed quantity ofhardware resources available to the user, the hardware associated withthe virtual computing devices can be scaled up or down depending uponthe resources the user requires.

As indicated above, users can connect to virtualized computing devicesand other cloud provider network 203 resources and services, andconfigure and manage telecommunications networks such as 5G networks,using various interfaces 206 (e.g., APIs) via intermediate network(s)212. An API refers to an interface 206 and/or communication protocolbetween a client device 215 and a server, such that if the client makesa request in a predefined format, the client should receive a responsein a specific format or cause a defined action to be initiated. In thecloud provider network context, APIs provide a gateway for customers toaccess cloud infrastructure by allowing customers to obtain data from orcause actions within the cloud provider network 203, enabling thedevelopment of applications that interact with resources and serviceshosted in the cloud provider network 203. APIs can also enable differentservices of the cloud provider network 203 to exchange data with oneanother. Users can choose to deploy their virtual computing systems toprovide network-based services for their own use and/or for use by theircustomers or clients.

The cloud provider network 203 can include a physical network (e.g.,sheet metal boxes, cables, rack hardware) referred to as the substrate.The substrate can be considered as a network fabric containing thephysical hardware that runs the services of the provider network. Thesubstrate may be isolated from the rest of the cloud provider network203, for example it may not be possible to route from a substratenetwork address to an address in a production network that runs servicesof the cloud provider, or to a customer network that hosts customerresources.

The cloud provider network 203 can also include an overlay network ofvirtualized computing resources that run on the substrate. In at leastsome embodiments, hypervisors or other devices or processes on thenetwork substrate may use encapsulation protocol technology toencapsulate and route network packets (e.g., client IP packets) over thenetwork substrate between client resource instances on different hostswithin the provider network. The encapsulation protocol technology maybe used on the network substrate to route encapsulated packets (alsoreferred to as network substrate packets) between endpoints on thenetwork substrate via overlay network paths or routes. The encapsulationprotocol technology may be viewed as providing a virtual networktopology overlaid on the network substrate. As such, network packets canbe routed along a substrate network according to constructs in theoverlay network (e.g., virtual networks that may be referred to asvirtual private clouds (VPCs), port/protocol firewall configurationsthat may be referred to as security groups). A mapping service (notshown) can coordinate the routing of these network packets. The mappingservice can be a regional distributed look up service that maps thecombination of overlay internet protocol (IP) and network identifier tosubstrate IP so that the distributed substrate computing devices canlook up where to send packets.

To illustrate, each physical host device (e.g., a compute server, ablock store server, an object store server, a control server) can havean IP address in the substrate network. Hardware virtualizationtechnology can enable multiple operating systems to run concurrently ona host computer, for example as virtual machines (VMs) on a computeserver. A hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor (VMM), on a hostallocates the host's hardware resources amongst various VMs on the hostand monitors the execution of the VMs. Each VM may be provided with oneor more IP addresses in an overlay network, and the VMM on a host may beaware of the IP addresses of the VMs on the host. The VMMs (and/or otherdevices or processes on the network substrate) may use encapsulationprotocol technology to encapsulate and route network packets (e.g.,client IP packets) over the network substrate between virtualizedresources on different hosts within the cloud provider network 203. Theencapsulation protocol technology may be used on the network substrateto route encapsulated packets between endpoints on the network substratevia overlay network paths or routes. The encapsulation protocoltechnology may be viewed as providing a virtual network topologyoverlaid on the network substrate. The encapsulation protocol technologymay include the mapping service that maintains a mapping directory thatmaps IP overlay addresses (e.g., IP addresses visible to customers) tosubstrate IP addresses (IP addresses not visible to customers), whichcan be accessed by various processes on the cloud provider network 203for routing packets between endpoints.

As illustrated, the traffic and operations of the cloud provider networksubstrate may broadly be subdivided into two categories in variousembodiments: control plane traffic carried over a logical control plane218 and data plane operations carried over a logical data plane 221.While the data plane 221 represents the movement of user data throughthe distributed computing system, the control plane 218 represents themovement of control signals through the distributed computing system.The control plane 218 generally includes one or more control planecomponents or services distributed across and implemented by one or morecontrol servers. Control plane traffic generally includes administrativeoperations, such as establishing isolated virtual networks for variouscustomers, monitoring resource usage and health, identifying aparticular host or server at which a requested compute instance is to belaunched, provisioning additional hardware as needed, and so on. Thedata plane 221 includes customer resources that are implemented on thecloud provider network (e.g., computing instances, containers, blockstorage volumes, databases, file storage). Data plane traffic generallyincludes non-administrative operations such as transferring data to andfrom the customer resources.

The control plane components are typically implemented on a separate setof servers from the data plane servers, and control plane traffic anddata plane traffic may be sent over separate/distinct networks. In someembodiments, control plane traffic and data plane traffic can besupported by different protocols. In some embodiments, messages (e.g.,packets) sent over the cloud provider network 203 include a flag toindicate whether the traffic is control plane traffic or data planetraffic. In some embodiments, the payload of traffic may be inspected todetermine its type (e.g., whether control or data plane). Othertechniques for distinguishing traffic types are possible.

As illustrated, the data plane 221 can include one or more computeservers, which may be bare metal (e.g., single tenant) or may bevirtualized by a hypervisor to run multiple VMs (sometimes referred toas “instances”) or microVMs for one or more customers. These computeservers can support a virtualized computing service (or “hardwarevirtualization service”) of the cloud provider network 203. Thevirtualized computing service may be part of the control plane 218,allowing customers to issue commands via an interface 206 (e.g., an API)to launch and manage compute instances (e.g., VMs, containers) for theirapplications. The virtualized computing service may offer virtualcompute instances with varying computational and/or memory resources. Inone embodiment, each of the virtual compute instances may correspond toone of several instance types. An instance type may be characterized byits hardware type, computational resources (e.g., number, type, andconfiguration of CPUs or CPU cores), memory resources (e.g., capacity,type, and configuration of local memory), storage resources (e.g.,capacity, type, and configuration of locally accessible storage),network resources (e.g., characteristics of its network interface and/ornetwork capabilities), and/or other suitable descriptivecharacteristics. Using instance type selection functionality, aninstance type may be selected for a customer, e.g., based (at least inpart) on input from the customer. For example, a customer may choose aninstance type from a predefined set of instance types. As anotherexample, a customer may specify the desired resources of an instancetype and/or requirements of a workload that the instance will run, andthe instance type selection functionality may select an instance typebased on such a specification.

The data plane 221 can also include one or more block store servers,which can include persistent storage for storing volumes of customerdata as well as software for managing these volumes. These block storeservers can support a managed block storage service of the cloudprovider network 203. The managed block storage service may be part ofthe control plane 218, allowing customers to issue commands via theinterface 206 (e.g., an API) to create and manage volumes for theirapplications running on compute instances. The block store serversinclude one or more servers on which data is stored as blocks. A blockis a sequence of bytes or bits, usually containing some whole number ofrecords, having a maximum length of the block size. Blocked data isnormally stored in a data buffer and read or written a whole block at atime. In general, a volume can correspond to a logical collection ofdata, such as a set of data maintained on behalf of a user. Uservolumes, which can be treated as an individual hard drive ranging forexample from 1 GB to 1 terabyte (TB) or more in size, are made of one ormore blocks stored on the block store servers. Although treated as anindividual hard drive, it will be appreciated that a volume may bestored as one or more virtualized devices implemented on one or moreunderlying physical host devices. Volumes may be partitioned a smallnumber of times (e.g., up to 16) with each partition hosted by adifferent host. The data of the volume may be replicated betweenmultiple devices within the cloud provider network, in order to providemultiple replicas of the volume (where such replicas may collectivelyrepresent the volume on the computing system). Replicas of a volume in adistributed computing system can beneficially provide for automaticfailover and recovery, for example by allowing the user to access eithera primary replica of a volume or a secondary replica of the volume thatis synchronized to the primary replica at a block level, such that afailure of either the primary or secondary replica does not inhibitaccess to the information of the volume. The role of the primary replicacan be to facilitate reads and writes (sometimes referred to as “inputoutput operations,” or simply “I/O operations”) at the volume, and topropagate any writes to the secondary (preferably synchronously in theI/O path, although asynchronous replication can also be used). Thesecondary replica can be updated synchronously with the primary replicaand provide for seamless transition during failover operations, wherebythe secondary replica assumes the role of the primary replica, andeither the former primary is designated as the secondary or a newreplacement secondary replica is provisioned. Although certain examplesherein discuss a primary replica and a secondary replica, it will beappreciated that a logical volume can include multiple secondaryreplicas. A compute instance can virtualize its I/O to a volume by wayof a client. The client represents instructions that enable a computeinstance to connect to, and perform I/O operations at, a remote datavolume (e.g., a data volume stored on a physically separate computingdevice accessed over a network). The client may be implemented on anoffload card of a server that includes the processing units (e.g., CPUsor GPUs) of the compute instance.

The data plane 221 can also include one or more object store servers,which represent another type of storage within the cloud providernetwork. The object storage servers include one or more servers on whichdata is stored as objects within resources referred to as buckets andcan be used to support a managed object storage service of the cloudprovider network. Each object typically includes the data being stored,a variable amount of metadata that enables various capabilities for theobject storage servers with respect to analyzing a stored object, and aglobally unique identifier or key that can be used to retrieve theobject. Each bucket is associated with a given user account. Customerscan store as many objects as desired within their buckets, can write,read, and delete objects in their buckets, and can control access totheir buckets and the objects contained therein. Further, in embodimentshaving a number of different object storage servers distributed acrossdifferent ones of the regions described above, users can choose theregion (or regions) where a bucket is stored, for example to optimizefor latency. Customers may use buckets to store objects of a variety oftypes, including machine images that can be used to launch VMs, andsnapshots that represent a point-in-time view of the data of a volume.

A provider substrate extension 224 (“PSE”) provides resources andservices of the cloud provider network 203 within a separate network,such as a telecommunications network, thereby extending functionality ofthe cloud provider network 203 to new locations (e.g., for reasonsrelated to latency in communications with customer devices, legalcompliance, security, etc.). In some implementations, a PSE 224 can beconfigured to provide capacity for cloud-based workloads to run withinthe telecommunications network. In some implementations, a PSE 224 canbe configured to provide the core and/or RAN functions of thetelecommunications network, and may be configured with additionalhardware (e.g., radio access hardware). Some implementations may beconfigured to allow for both, for example by allowing capacity unused bycore and/or RAN functions to be used for running cloud-based workloads.

As indicated, such provider substrate extensions 224 can include cloudprovider network-managed provider substrate extensions 227 (e.g., formedby servers located in a cloud provider-managed facility separate fromthose associated with the cloud provider network 203), communicationsservice provider substrate extensions 230 (e.g., formed by serversassociated with communications service provider facilities),customer-managed provider substrate extensions 233 (e.g., formed byservers located on-premise in a customer or partner facility), amongother possible types of substrate extensions.

As illustrated in the example provider substrate extension 224, aprovider substrate extension 224 can similarly include a logicalseparation between a control plane 236 and a data plane 239,respectively extending the control plane 218 and data plane 221 of thecloud provider network 203. The provider substrate extension 224 may bepre-configured, e.g. by the cloud provider network operator, with anappropriate combination of hardware with software and/or firmwareelements to support various types of computing-related resources, and todo so in a manner that mirrors the experience of using the cloudprovider network 203. For example, one or more provider substrateextension location servers can be provisioned by the cloud provider fordeployment within a provider substrate extension 224. As describedabove, the cloud provider network 203 may offer a set of predefinedinstance types, each having varying types and quantities of underlyinghardware resources. Each instance type may also be offered in varioussizes. In order to enable customers to continue using the same instancetypes and sizes in a provider substrate extension 224 as they do in theregion, the servers can be heterogeneous servers. A heterogeneous servercan concurrently support multiple instance sizes of the same type andmay be also reconfigured to host whatever instance types are supportedby its underlying hardware resources. The reconfiguration of theheterogeneous server can occur on-the-fly using the available capacityof the servers, that is, while other VMs are still running and consumingother capacity of the provider substrate extension location servers.This can improve utilization of computing resources within the edgelocation by allowing for better packing of running instances on servers,and also provides a seamless experience regarding instance usage acrossthe cloud provider network 203 and the cloud provider network-managedprovider substrate extension 227.

The provider substrate extension servers can host one or more computeinstances. Compute instances can be VMs, or containers that package upcode and all its dependencies, so that an application can run quicklyand reliably across computing environments (e.g., including VMs andmicroVMs). In addition, the servers may host one or more data volumes,if desired by the customer. In the region of a cloud provider network203, such volumes may be hosted on dedicated block store servers.However, due to the possibility of having a significantly smallercapacity at a provider substrate extension 224 than in the region, anoptimal utilization experience may not be provided if the providersubstrate extension 224 includes such dedicated block store servers.Accordingly, a block storage service may be virtualized in the providersubstrate extension 224, such that one of the VMs runs the block storesoftware and stores the data of a volume. Similar to the operation of ablock storage service in the region of a cloud provider network 203, thevolumes within a provider substrate extension 224 may be replicated fordurability and availability. The volumes may be provisioned within theirown isolated virtual network within the provider substrate extension224. The compute instances and any volumes collectively make up a dataplane 239 extension of the provider network data plane 221 within theprovider substrate extension 224.

The servers within a provider substrate extension 224 may, in someimplementations, host certain local control plane components, forexample, components that enable the provider substrate extension 224 tocontinue functioning if there is a break in the connection back to thecloud provider network 203. Examples of these components include amigration manager that can move compute instances between providersubstrate extension servers if needed to maintain availability, and akey value data store that indicates where volume replicas are located.However, generally the control plane 236 functionality for a providersubstrate extension 224 will remain in the cloud provider network 203 inorder to allow customers to use as much resource capacity of theprovider substrate extension 224 as possible.

The migration manager may have a centralized coordination component thatruns in the region, as well as local controllers that run on the PSEservers (and servers in the cloud provider's data centers). Thecentralized coordination component can identify target edge locationsand/or target hosts when a migration is triggered, while the localcontrollers can coordinate the transfer of data between the source andtarget hosts. The described movement of the resources between hosts indifferent locations may take one of several forms of migration.Migration refers to moving virtual machine instances (and/or otherresources) between hosts in a cloud computing network, or between hostsoutside of the cloud computing network and hosts within the cloud. Thereare different types of migration including live migration and rebootmigration. During a reboot migration, the customer experiences an outageand an effective power cycle of their virtual machine instance. Forexample, a control plane service can coordinate a reboot migrationworkflow that involves tearing down the current domain on the originalhost and subsequently creating a new domain for the virtual machineinstance on the new host. The instance is rebooted by being shut down onthe original host and booted up again on the new host.

Live migration refers to the process of moving a running virtual machineor application between different physical machines without significantlydisrupting the availability of the virtual machine (e.g., the down timeof the virtual machine is not noticeable by the end user). When thecontrol plane executes a live migration workflow it can create a new“inactive” domain associated with the instance, while the originaldomain for the instance continues to run as the “active” domain. Memory(including any in-memory state of running applications), storage, andnetwork connectivity of the virtual machine are transferred from theoriginal host with the active domain to the destination host with theinactive domain. The virtual machine may be briefly paused to preventstate changes while transferring memory contents to the destinationhost. The control plane can transition the inactive domain to become theactive domain and demote the original active domain to become theinactive domain (sometimes referred to as a “flip”), after which theinactive domain can be discarded.

Techniques for various types of migration involve managing the criticalphase—the time when the virtual machine instance is unavailable to thecustomer —which should be kept as short as possible. In the presentlydisclosed migration techniques this can be especially challenging, asresources are being moved between hosts in geographically separatelocations which may be connected over one or more intermediate networks.For live migration, the disclosed techniques can dynamically determinean amount of memory state data to pre-copy (e.g., while the instance isstill running on the source host) and to post-copy (e.g., after theinstance begins running on the destination host), based for example onlatency between the locations, network bandwidth/usage patterns, and/oron which memory pages are used most frequently by the instance. Further,a particular time at which the memory state data is transferred can bedynamically determined based on conditions of the network between thelocations. This analysis may be performed by a migration managementcomponent in the region, or by a migration management component runninglocally in the source edge location. If the instance has access tovirtualized storage, both the source domain and target domain can besimultaneously attached to the storage to enable uninterrupted access toits data during the migration and in the case that rollback to thesource domain is required.

Server software running at a provider substrate extension 224 may bedesigned by the cloud provider to run on the cloud provider substratenetwork, and this software may be enabled to run unmodified in aprovider substrate extension 224 by using local network manager(s) 242to create a private replica of the substrate network within the edgelocation (a “shadow substrate”). The local network manager(s) 242 canrun on provider substrate extension 224 servers and bridge the shadowsubstrate with the provider substrate extension 224 network, forexample, by acting as a virtual private network (VPN) endpoint orendpoints between the provider substrate extension 224 and the proxies245, 248 in the cloud provider network 203 and by implementing themapping service (for traffic encapsulation and decapsulation) to relatedata plane traffic (from the data plane proxies 248) and control planetraffic (from the control plane proxies 245) to the appropriateserver(s). By implementing a local version of the provider network'ssubstrate-overlay mapping service, the local network manager(s) 242allow resources in the provider substrate extension 224 to seamlesslycommunicate with resources in the cloud provider network 203. In someimplementations, a single local network manager 242 can perform theseactions for all servers hosting compute instances in a providersubstrate extension 224. In other implementations, each of the serverhosting compute instances may have a dedicated local network manager242. In multi-rack edge locations, inter-rack communications can gothrough the local network managers 242, with local network managersmaintaining open tunnels to one another.

Provider substrate extension locations can utilize secure networkingtunnels through the provider substrate extension 224 network to thecloud provider network 203, for example, to maintain security ofcustomer data when traversing the provider substrate extension 224network and any other intermediate network (which may include the publicinternet). Within the cloud provider network 203, these tunnels arecomposed of virtual infrastructure components including isolated virtualnetworks (e.g., in the overlay network), control plane proxies 245, dataplane proxies 248, and substrate network interfaces. Such proxies 245,248 may be implemented as containers running on compute instances. Insome embodiments, each server in a provider substrate extension 224location that hosts compute instances can utilize at least two tunnels:one for control plane traffic (e.g., Constrained Application Protocol(CoAP) traffic) and one for encapsulated data plane traffic. Aconnectivity manager (not shown) within the cloud provider network 203manages the cloud provider network-side lifecycle of these tunnels andtheir components, for example, by provisioning them automatically whenneeded and maintaining them in a healthy operating state. In someembodiments, a direct connection between a provider substrate extension224 location and the cloud provider network 203 can be used for controland data plane communications. As compared to a VPN through othernetworks, the direct connection can provide constant bandwidth and moreconsistent network performance because of its relatively fixed andstable network path.

A control plane (CP) proxy 245 can be provisioned in the cloud providernetwork 203 to represent particular host(s) in an edge location. CPproxies 245 are intermediaries between the control plane 218 in thecloud provider network 203 and control plane targets in the controlplane 236 of provider substrate extension 224. That is, CP proxies 245provide infrastructure for tunneling management API traffic destined forprovider substrate extension servers out of the region substrate and tothe provider substrate extension 224. For example, a virtualizedcomputing service of the cloud provider network 203 can issue a commandto a VMM of a server of a provider substrate extension 224 to launch acompute instance. A CP proxy 245 maintains a tunnel (e.g., a VPN) to alocal network manager 242 of the provider substrate extension 224. Thesoftware implemented within the CP proxies 245 ensures that onlywell-formed API traffic leaves from and returns to the substrate. CPproxies 245 provide a mechanism to expose remote servers on the cloudprovider substrate while still protecting substrate security materials(e.g., encryption keys, security tokens) from leaving the cloud providernetwork 203. The one-way control plane traffic tunnel imposed by the CPproxies 245 also prevents any (potentially compromised) devices frommaking calls back to the substrate. CP proxies 245 may be instantiatedone-for-one with servers at a provider substrate extension 224 or may beable to manage control plane traffic for multiple servers in the sameprovider substrate extension.

A data plane (DP) proxy 248 can also be provisioned in the cloudprovider network 203 to represent particular server(s) in a providersubstrate extension 224. The DP proxy 248 acts as a shadow or anchor ofthe server(s) and can be used by services within the cloud providernetwork 203 to monitor the health of the host (including itsavailability, used/free compute and capacity, used/free storage andcapacity, and network bandwidth usage/availability). The DP proxy 248also allows isolated virtual networks to span provider substrateextensions 224 and the cloud provider network 203 by acting as a proxyfor server(s) in the cloud provider network 203. Each DP proxy 248 canbe implemented as a packet-forwarding compute instance or container. Asillustrated, each DP proxy 248 can maintain a VPN tunnel with a localnetwork manager 242 that manages traffic to the server(s) that the DPproxy 248 represents. This tunnel can be used to send data plane trafficbetween the provider substrate extension server(s) and the cloudprovider network 203. Data plane traffic flowing between a providersubstrate extension 224 and the cloud provider network 203 can be passedthrough DP proxies 248 associated with that provider substrate extension224. For data plane traffic flowing from a provider substrate extension224 to the cloud provider network 203, DP proxies 248 can receiveencapsulated data plane traffic, validate it for correctness, and allowit to enter into the cloud provider network 203. DP proxies 248 canforward encapsulated traffic from the cloud provider network 203directly to a provider substrate extension 224.

Local network manager(s) 242 can provide secure network connectivitywith the proxies 245, 248 established in the cloud provider network 203.After connectivity has been established between the local networkmanager(s) 242 and the proxies 245, 248, customers may issue commandsvia the interface 206 to instantiate compute instances (and/or performother operations using compute instances) using provider substrateextension resources in a manner analogous to the way in which suchcommands would be issued with respect to compute instances hosted withinthe cloud provider network 203. From the perspective of the customer,the customer can now seamlessly use local resources within a providersubstrate extension 224 (as well as resources located in the cloudprovider network 203, if desired). The compute instances set up on aserver at a provider substrate extension 224 may communicate both withelectronic devices located in the same network, as well as with otherresources that are set up in the cloud provider network 203, as desired.A local gateway 251 can be implemented to provide network connectivitybetween a provider substrate extension 224 and a network associated withthe extension (e.g., a communications service provider network in theexample of a communications service provider substrate extension 230).

There may be circumstances that necessitate the transfer of data betweenthe object storage service and a provider substrate extension (PSE) 224.For example, the object storage service may store machine images used tolaunch VMs, as well as snapshots representing point-in-time backups ofvolumes. The object gateway can be provided on a PSE server or aspecialized storage device, and provide customers with configurable,per-bucket caching of object storage bucket contents in their PSE 224 tominimize the impact of PSE-region latency on the customer's workloads.The object gateway can also temporarily store snapshot data fromsnapshots of volumes in the PSE 224 and then sync with the objectservers in the region when possible. The object gateway can also storemachine images that the customer designates for use within the PSE 224or on the customer's premises. In some implementations, the data withinthe PSE 224 may be encrypted with a unique key, and the cloud providercan limit keys from being shared from the region to the PSE 224 forsecurity reasons. Accordingly, data exchanged between the object storeservers and the object gateway may utilize encryption, decryption,and/or re-encryption in order to preserve security boundaries withrespect to encryption keys or other sensitive data. The transformationintermediary can perform these operations, and a PSE bucket can becreated (on the object store servers) to store snapshot data and machineimage data using the PSE encryption key.

In the manner described above, a PSE 224 forms an edge location, in thatit provides the resources and services of the cloud provider network 203outside of a traditional cloud provider data center and closer tocustomer devices. An edge location, as referred to herein, can bestructured in several ways. In some implementations, an edge locationcan be an extension of the cloud provider network substrate including alimited quantity of capacity provided outside of an availability zone(e.g., in a small data center or other facility of the cloud providerthat is located close to a customer workload and that may be distantfrom any availability zones). Such edge locations may be referred to as“far zones” (due to being far from other availability zones) or “nearzones” (due to being near to customer workloads). A near zone may beconnected in various ways to a publicly accessible network such as theInternet, for example directly, via another network, or via a privateconnection to a region. Although typically a near zone would have morelimited capacity than a region, in some cases a near zone may havesubstantial capacity, for example thousands of racks or more.

In some implementations, an edge location may be an extension of thecloud provider network substrate formed by one or more servers locatedon-premise in a customer or partner facility, wherein such server(s)communicate over a network (e.g., a publicly-accessible network such asthe Internet) with a nearby availability zone or region of the cloudprovider network. This type of substrate extension located outside ofcloud provider network data centers can be referred to as an “outpost”of the cloud provider network. Some outposts may be integrated intocommunications networks, for example as a multi-access edge computing(MEC) site having physical infrastructure spread acrosstelecommunication data centers, telecommunication aggregation sites,and/or telecommunication base stations within the telecommunicationnetwork. In the on-premise example, the limited capacity of the outpostmay be available for use only by the customer who owns the premises (andany other accounts allowed by the customer). In the telecommunicationsexample, the limited capacity of the outpost may be shared amongst anumber of applications (e.g., games, virtual reality applications,healthcare applications) that send data to users of thetelecommunications network.

An edge location can include data plane capacity controlled at leastpartly by a control plane of a nearby availability zone of the providernetwork. As such, an availability zone group can include a “parent”availability zone and any “child” edge locations homed to (e.g.,controlled at least partly by the control plane of) the parentavailability zone. Certain limited control plane functionality (e.g.,features that require low latency communication with customer resources,and/or features that enable the edge location to continue functioningwhen disconnected from the parent availability zone) may also be presentin some edge locations. Thus, in the above examples, an edge locationrefers to an extension of at least data plane capacity that ispositioned at the edge of the cloud provider network, close to customerdevices and/or workloads.

In the example of FIG. 1A, the distributed computing devices 112 (FIG.1A), the centralized computing devices 115 (FIG. 1A), and the corecomputing devices 118 (FIG. 1A) may be implemented as provider substrateextensions 224 of the cloud provider network 203. The installation orsiting of provider substrate extensions 224 within a communicationnetwork 100 can vary subject to the particular network topology orarchitecture of the communication network 100. Provider substrateextensions 224 can generally be connected anywhere the communicationnetwork 100 can break out packet-based traffic (e.g., IP based traffic).Additionally, communications between a given provider substrateextension 224 and the cloud provider network 203 typically securelytransit at least a portion of the communication network 100 (e.g., via asecure tunnel, virtual private network, a direct connection, etc.).

In 5G wireless network development efforts, edge locations may beconsidered a possible implementation of Multi-access Edge Computing(MEC). Such edge locations can be connected to various points within a5G network that provide a breakout for data traffic as part of the UserPlane Function (UPF). Older wireless networks can incorporate edgelocations as well. In 3G wireless networks, for example, edge locationscan be connected to the packet-switched network portion of acommunication network 100, such as to a Serving General Packet RadioServices Support Node (SGSN) or to a Gateway General Packet RadioServices Support Node (GGSN). In 4G wireless networks, edge locationscan be connected to a Serving Gateway (SGW) or Packet Data NetworkGateway (PGW) as part of the core network or evolved packet core (EPC).In some embodiments, traffic between a provider substrate extension 224and the cloud provider network 203 can be broken out of thecommunication network 100 without routing through the core network.

In some embodiments, provider substrate extensions 224 can be connectedto more than one communication network associated with respectivecustomers. For example, when two communication networks of respectivecustomers share or route traffic through a common point, a providersubstrate extension 224 can be connected to both networks. For example,each customer can assign some portion of its network address space tothe provider substrate extension 224, and the provider substrateextension 224 can include a router or gateway 251 that can distinguishtraffic exchanged with each of the communication networks 100. Forexample, traffic destined for the provider substrate extension 224 fromone network might have a different destination IP address, source IPaddress, and/or virtual local area network (VLAN) tag than trafficreceived from another network. Traffic originating from the providersubstrate extension 224 to a destination on one of the networks can besimilarly encapsulated to have the appropriate VLAN tag, source IPaddress (e.g., from the pool allocated to the provider substrateextension 224 from the destination network address space) anddestination IP address.

FIG. 2B depicts an example 253 of cellularization and geographicdistribution of the communication network 100 (FIG. 1A) for providinghighly available user plane functions (UPFs). In FIG. 2B, a user device254 communicates with a request router 255 to route a request to one ofa plurality of control plane cells 257 a and 257 b. Each control planecell 257 may include a network service API gateway 260, a network sliceconfiguration 262, a function for network service monitoring 264, siteplanning data 266 (including layout, device type, device quantities,etc. that describe a customer's site requirements), a networkservice/function catalog 268, a function for orchestration 270, and/orother components. The larger control plane can be divided into cells inorder to reduce the likelihood that large scale errors will affect awide range of customers, for example by having one or more cells percustomer, per network, or per region that operate independently.

The network service/function catalog 268 is also referred to as the NFRepository Function (NRF). In a Service Based Architecture (SBA) 5Gnetwork, the control plane functionality and common data repositoriescan be delivered by way of a set of interconnected network functionsbuilt using a microservices architecture. The NRF can maintain a recordof available NF instances and their supported services, allowing otherNF instances to subscribe and be notified of registrations from NFinstances of a given type. The NRF thus can support service discovery byreceipt of discovery requests from NF instances, and details which NFinstances support specific services. The network function orchestrator270 can perform NF lifecycle management including instantiation,scale-out/in, performance measurements, event correlation, andtermination. The network function orchestrator 270 can also onboard newNFs, manage migration to new or updated versions of existing NFs,identify NF sets that are suitable for a particular network slice orlarger network, and orchestrate NFs across different computing devicesand sites that make up the radio-based network 103 (FIG. 1A).

The control plane cell 257 may be in communication with one or more cellsites 272 by way of a RAN interface 273, one or more customer local datacenters 274, one or more local zones 276, and one or more regional zones278. The RAN interface 273 may include an application programminginterface (API) that facilitates provisioning or releasing capacity in aRAN operated by a third-party communication service provider at a cellsite 272. The cell sites 272 include computing hardware 280 thatexecutes one or more distributed unit (DU) network functions 282. Thecustomer local data centers 274 include computing hardware 283 thatexecute one or more DU or central unit (CU) network functions 284, anetwork controller 285, a UPF 286, one or more edge applications 287corresponding to customer workloads, and/or other components.

The local zones 276, which may be in a data center operated by a cloudservice provider, may execute one or more core network functions 288,such as an AMF, an SMF, a network exposure function (NEF) that securelyexposes the services and capabilities of other network functions, aunified data management (UDM) function that manages subscriber data forauthorization, registration, and mobility management. The local zones276 may also execute a UPF 286, a service for metric processing 289, andone or more edge applications 287.

The regional zones 278, which may be in a data center operated by acloud service provider, may execute one or more core network functions288; a UPF 286; an operations support system (OSS) 290 that supportsnetwork management systems, service delivery, service fulfillment,service assurance, and customer care; an internet protocol multimediasubsystem (IMS) 291; a business support system (BSS) 292 that supportsproduct management, customer management, revenue management, and/ororder management; one or more portal applications 293, and/or othercomponents.

In this example, the communication network 100 employs a cellulararchitecture to reduce the blast radius of individual components. At thetop level, the control plane is in multiple control plane cells 257 toprevent an individual control plane failure from impacting alldeployments.

Within each control plane cell 257, multiple redundant stacks can beprovided with the control plane shifting traffic to secondary stacks asneeded. For example, a cell site 272 may be configured to utilize anearby local zone 276 as its default core network. In the event that thelocal zone 276 experiences an outage, the control plane can redirect thecell site 272 to use the backup stack in the regional zone 278. Trafficthat would normally be routed from the internet to the local zone 276can be shifted to endpoints for the regional zones 278. Each controlplane cell 257 can implement a “stateless” architecture that shares acommon session database across multiple sites (such as acrossavailability zones or edge sites).

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary cloud provider network 203 includinggeographically dispersed provider substrate extensions 224 (FIG. 2A) (or“edge locations 303”) according to some embodiments. As illustrated, acloud provider network 203 can be formed as a number of regions 306,where a region 306 is a separate geographical area in which the cloudprovider has one or more data centers 309. Each region 306 can includetwo or more availability zones (AZs) connected to one another via aprivate high-speed network such as, for example, a fiber communicationconnection. An availability zone refers to an isolated failure domainincluding one or more data center facilities with separate power,separate networking, and separate cooling relative to other availabilityzones. A cloud provider may strive to position availability zones withina region 306 far enough away from one another such that a naturaldisaster, widespread power outage, or other unexpected event does nottake more than one availability zone offline at the same time. Customerscan connect to resources within availability zones of the cloud providernetwork 203 via a publicly accessible network (e.g., the Internet, acellular communication network, a communication service providernetwork). Transit Centers (TC) are the primary backbone locationslinking customers to the cloud provider network 203 and may beco-located at other network provider facilities (e.g., Internet serviceproviders, telecommunications providers). Each region 306 can operatetwo or more TCs for redundancy. Regions 306 are connected to a globalnetwork which includes private networking infrastructure (e.g., fiberconnections controlled by the cloud service provider) connecting eachregion 306 to at least one other region. The cloud provider network 203may deliver content from points of presence (PoPs) outside of, butnetworked with, these regions 306 by way of edge locations 303 andregional edge cache servers. This compartmentalization and geographicdistribution of computing hardware enables the cloud provider network203 to provide low-latency resource access to customers on a globalscale with a high degree of fault tolerance and stability.

In comparison to the number of regional data centers or availabilityzones, the number of edge locations 303 can be much higher. Suchwidespread deployment of edge locations 303 can provide low-latencyconnectivity to the cloud for a much larger group of end user devices(in comparison to those that happen to be very close to a regional datacenter). In some embodiments, each edge location 303 can be peered tosome portion of the cloud provider network 203 (e.g., a parentavailability zone or regional data center). Such peering allows thevarious components operating in the cloud provider network 203 to managethe compute resources of the edge location 303. In some cases, multipleedge locations 303 may be sited or installed in the same facility (e.g.,separate racks of computer systems) and managed by different zones ordata centers 309 to provide additional redundancy. Note that althoughedge locations 303 are typically depicted herein as within acommunication service provider network or a radio-based network 103(FIG. 1A), in some cases, such as when a cloud provider network facilityis relatively close to a communications service provider facility, theedge location 303 can remain within the physical premises of the cloudprovider network 203 while being connected to the communications serviceprovider network via a fiber or other network link.

An edge location 303 can be structured in several ways. In someimplementations, an edge location 303 can be an extension of the cloudprovider network substrate including a limited quantity of capacityprovided outside of an availability zone (e.g., in a small data center309 or other facility of the cloud provider that is located close to acustomer workload and that may be distant from any availability zones).Such edge locations 303 may be referred to as local zones (due to beingmore local or proximate to a group of users than traditionalavailability zones). A local zone may be connected in various ways to apublicly accessible network such as the Internet, for example directly,via another network, or via a private connection to a region 306.Although typically a local zone would have more limited capacity than aregion 306, in some cases a local zone may have substantial capacity,for example thousands of racks or more. Some local zones may use similarinfrastructure as typical cloud provider data centers, instead of theedge location 303 infrastructure described herein.

As indicated herein, a cloud provider network 203 can be formed as anumber of regions 306, where each region 306 represents a geographicalarea in which the cloud provider clusters data centers 309. Each region306 can further include multiple (e.g., two or more) availability zones(AZs) connected to one another via a private high-speed network, forexample, a fiber communication connection. An AZ may provide an isolatedfailure domain including one or more data center facilities withseparate power, separate networking, and separate cooling from those inanother AZ. Preferably, AZs within a region 306 are positioned farenough away from one another such that a same natural disaster (or otherfailure-inducing event) should not affect or take more than one AZoffline at the same time. Customers can connect to an AZ of the cloudprovider network 203 via a publicly accessible network (e.g., theInternet, a cellular communication network).

The parenting of a given edge location 303 to an AZ or region 306 of thecloud provider network 203 can be based on a number of factors. One suchparenting factor is data sovereignty. For example, to keep dataoriginating from a communication network in one country within thatcountry, the edge locations 303 deployed within that communicationnetwork can be parented to AZs or regions 306 within that country.Another factor is availability of services. For example, some edgelocations 303 may have different hardware configurations such as thepresence or absence of components such as local non-volatile storage forcustomer data (e.g., solid state drives), graphics accelerators, etc.Some AZs or regions 306 might lack the services to exploit thoseadditional resources, thus, an edge location could be parented to an AZor region 306 that supports the use of those resources. Another factoris the latency between the AZ or region 306 and the edge location 303.While the deployment of edge locations 303 within a communicationnetwork has latency benefits, those benefits might be negated byparenting an edge location 303 to a distant AZ or region 306 thatintroduces significant latency for the edge location 303 to regiontraffic. Accordingly, edge locations 303 are often parented to nearby(in terms of network latency) AZs or regions 306.

With reference to FIG. 4 , shown is a networked environment 400according to various embodiments. The networked environment 400 includesa computing environment 403, one or more client devices 406, one or moreradio access networks (RANs) 409, a spectrum reservation service 410,and one or more radio-based networks 103, which are in datacommunication with each other via a network 412. The network 412includes, for example, the Internet, intranets, extranets, wide areanetworks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), wired networks, wirelessnetworks, cable networks, satellite networks, or other suitablenetworks, etc., or any combination of two or more such networks. TheRANs 409 may be operated by a plurality of different communicationservice providers. In some cases, one or more of the RANs 409 may beoperated by a cloud provider network 203 (FIG. 2A) or a customer of thecloud provider network 203.

The computing environment 403 may comprise, for example, a servercomputer or any other system providing computing capacity.Alternatively, the computing environment 403 may employ a plurality ofcomputing devices that may be arranged, for example, in one or moreserver banks or computer banks or other arrangements. Such computingdevices may be located in a single installation or may be distributedamong many different geographical locations. For example, the computingenvironment 403 may include a plurality of computing devices thattogether may comprise a hosted computing resource, a grid computingresource, and/or any other distributed computing arrangement. In somecases, the computing environment 403 may correspond to an elasticcomputing resource where the allotted capacity of processing, network,storage, or other computing-related resources may vary over time. Forexample, the computing environment 403 may correspond to a cloudprovider network 203, where customers are billed according to theircomputing resource usage based on a utility computing model.

In some embodiments, the computing environment 403 may correspond to avirtualized private network within a physical network comprising virtualmachine instances executed on physical computing hardware, e.g., by wayof a hypervisor. The virtual machine instances and any containersrunning on these instances may be given network connectivity by way ofvirtualized network components enabled by physical network components,such as routers and switches.

Various applications and/or other functionality may be executed in thecomputing environment 403 according to various embodiments. Also,various data is stored in a data store 415 that is accessible to thecomputing environment 403. The data store 415 may be representative of aplurality of data stores 415 as can be appreciated. The data stored inthe data store 415, for example, is associated with the operation of thevarious applications and/or functional entities described below.

The computing environment 403 as part of a cloud provider networkoffering utility computing services includes computing devices 418 andother types of computing devices. The computing devices 418 maycorrespond to different types of computing devices 418 and may havedifferent computing architectures. The computing architectures maydiffer by utilizing processors having different architectures, such asx86, x86_64, ARM, Scalable Processor Architecture (SPARC), PowerPC, andso on. For example, some computing devices 418 may have x86 processors,while other computing devices 418 may have ARM processors. The computingdevices 418 may differ also in hardware resources available, such aslocal storage, graphics processing units (GPUs), machine learningextensions, and other characteristics.

The computing devices 418 may have various forms of allocated computingcapacity 421, which may include virtual machine (VM) instances,containers, serverless functions, and so forth. The VM instances may beinstantiated from a VM image. To this end, customers may specify that avirtual machine instance should be launched in a particular type ofcomputing device 418 as opposed to other types of computing devices 418.In various examples, one VM instance may be executed singularly on aparticular computing device 418, or a plurality of VM instances may beexecuted on a particular computing device 418. Also, a particularcomputing device 418 may execute different types of VM instances, whichmay offer different quantities of resources available via the computingdevice 418. For example, some types of VM instances may offer morememory and processing capability than other types of VM instances.

The components executed on the computing environment 403, for example,include a radio-based network (RBN) management service 424, a capacitymanagement service 433, a RAN interface 273, and other applications,services, processes, systems, engines, or functionality not discussed indetail herein.

The RBN management service 424 is executed to provision, manage,configure, and monitor radio-based networks 103 (FIG. 1A) that areoperated by a cloud service provider on behalf of customers. To thisend, the RBN management service 424 may generate a number of userinterfaces that allow customers to place orders for new radio-basednetworks 103, scale up or scale down existing radio-based networks 103,modify the operation of existing radio-based networks 103, configurewireless devices 106 (FIG. 1A) that are permitted to use the radio-basednetworks 103, provide statistics and metrics regarding the operation ofradio-based networks 103, reserve frequency spectrum for customer'snetworks via a spectrum reservation service 410, provision or releasecapacity in RANs 409 via the RAN interface 273, and so on. For example,the RBN management service 424 may generate one or more network pages,such as web pages, that include the user interfaces. Also, the RBNmanagement service 424 may support this functionality by way of an APIthat may be called by a client application 436. In addition tofacilitating interaction with users, the RBN management service 424 alsoimplements orchestration of deployments and configuration changes forthe radio-based networks 103 and on-going monitoring of performanceparameters. In some cases, the RBN management service 424 may generate anetwork plan 439 for a customer based at least in part in aspecification of the customer's location, an automated site survey by anunmanned aerial vehicle, and/or other input parameters.

The capacity management service 433 is executed to manage computingcapacity in the radio-based network 103 and the associated core network.This may involve transferring computing capacity from network functionworkloads to customer workloads, and vice versa. Further, unusedcomputing capacity may be transferred from one customer or oneradio-based network 103 to another. Also, network function workloads maybe transferred between distributed computing devices 112 (FIG. 1A) atcell 109 (FIG. 1A) sites, centralized computing devices 115 (FIG. 1A) atcustomer sites, and core computing devices 118 (FIG. 1A) at datacenters.

The data stored in the data store 415 includes, for example, one or morenetwork plans 439, one or more cellular topologies 442, one or morespectrum assignments 445, device data 448, one or more RBN metrics 451,customer billing data 454, radio unit configuration data 457, antennaconfiguration data 460, network function configuration data 463, one ormore network function workloads 466, one or more customer workloads 469,and potentially other data.

The network plan 439 is a specification of a radio-based network 103 tobe deployed for a customer. For example, a network plan 439 may includepremises locations or geographic areas to be covered, a number of cells,device identification information and permissions, a desired maximumnetwork latency, a desired bandwidth or network throughput for one ormore classes of devices, one or more quality of service parameters forapplications or services, one or more routes to be covered by the RBN103, a schedule of coverage for the RBN 103 or for portions of the RBN103, a periodic schedule of coverage for the RBN 103 or for portions ofthe RBN 103, a start time for the RBN 103 or for portions of the RBN103, an end time for the RBN 103 or for portions of the RBN 103, and/orother parameters that can be used to create a radio-based network 103. Acustomer may manually specify one or more of these parameters via a userinterface. One or more of the parameters may be prepopulated as defaultparameters. In some cases, a network plan 439 may be generated for acustomer based at least in part on automated site surveys using unmannedaerial vehicles. Values of the parameters that define the network plan439 may be used as a basis for a cloud service provider billing thecustomer under a utility computing model. For example, the customer maybe billed a higher amount for lower latency targets and/or higherbandwidth targets in a service-level agreement (SLA), and the customercan be charged on a per-device basis, a per-cell basis, based on ageographic area served, based on spectrum availability, etc. In somecases, the network plan 439 may incorporate thresholds and referenceparameters determined at least in part on an automated probe of anexisting private network of a customer.

The cellular topology 442 includes an arrangement of a plurality ofcells for a customer that takes into account reuse of frequency spectrumwhere possible given the location of the cells. The cellular topology442 may be automatically generated given a site survey. In some cases,the number of cells in the cellular topology 442 may be automaticallydetermined based on a desired geographic area to be covered,availability of backhaul connectivity at various sites, signalpropagation, available frequency spectrum, and/or on other parameters.For radio-based networks 103, the cellular topology 442 may be developedto cover one or more buildings in an organizational campus, one or moreschools in a school district, one or more buildings in a university oruniversity system, and other areas.

The spectrum assignments 445 include frequency spectrum that isavailable to be allocated for radio-based networks 103 as well asfrequency spectrum that is currently allocated to radio-based networks103. The frequency spectrum may include spectrum that is publiclyaccessible without restriction, spectrum that is individually owned orleased by customers, spectrum that is owned or leased by the provider,spectrum that is free to use but requires reservation, and so on.

The device data 448 corresponds to data describing wireless devices 106that are permitted to connect to the radio-based network 103. Thisdevice data 448 includes corresponding users, account information,billing information, data plans, permitted applications or uses, anindication of whether the wireless device 106 is mobile or fixed, alocation, a current cell, a network address, device identifiers (e.g.,International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, Equipment SerialNumber (ESN), Media Access Control (MAC) address, Subscriber IdentityModule (SIM) number, etc.), and so on.

The RBN metrics 451 include various metrics or statistics that indicatethe performance or health of the radio-based network 103. Such RBNmetrics 451 may include bandwidth metrics, dropped packet metrics,signal strength metrics, latency metrics, and so on. The RBN metrics 451may be aggregated on a per-device basis, a per-cell basis, aper-customer basis, etc.

The customer billing data 454 specifies charges that the customer is toincur for the operation of the radio-based network 103 for the customerby the provider. The charges may include fixed costs based uponequipment deployed to the customer and/or usage costs based uponutilization as determined by usage metrics that are tracked. In somecases, the customer may purchase the equipment up-front and may becharged only for bandwidth or backend network costs. In other cases, thecustomer may incur no up-front costs and may be charged purely based onutilization. With the equipment being provided to the customer based ona utility computing model, the cloud service provider may choose anoptimal configuration of equipment in order to meet customer targetperformance metrics while avoiding overprovisioning of unnecessaryhardware.

The radio unit configuration data 457 may correspond to configurationsettings for radio units deployed in radio-based networks 103. Suchsettings may include frequencies to be used, protocols to be used,modulation parameters, bandwidth, network routing and/or backhaulconfiguration, and so on.

The antenna configuration data 460 may correspond to configurationsettings for antennas, to include frequencies to be used, azimuth,vertical or horizontal orientation, beam tilt, and/or other parametersthat may be controlled automatically (e.g., by network-connected motorsand controls on the antennas) or manually by directing a user to mountthe antenna in a certain way or make a physical change to the antenna.

The network function configuration data 463 corresponds to configurationsettings that configure the operation of various network functions forthe radio-based network 103. In various embodiments, the networkfunctions may be deployed in VM instances or containers located incomputing devices 418 that are at cell sites, at customer aggregationsites, or in data centers remotely located from the customer.Non-limiting examples of network functions may include an access andmobility management function, a session management function, a userplane function, a policy control function, an authentication serverfunction, a unified data management function, an application function, anetwork exposure function, a network function repository, a networkslice selection function, and/or others. The network function workloads466 correspond to machine images, containers, or functions to belaunched in the allocated computing capacity 421 to perform one or moreof the network functions.

The customer workloads 469 correspond to machine images, containers, orfunctions of the customer that may be executed alongside or in place ofthe network function workloads 466 in the allocated computing capacity421. For example, the customer workloads 469 may provide or support acustomer application or service. In various examples, the customerworkloads 469 relate to factory automation, autonomous robotics,augmented reality, virtual reality, design, surveillance, and so on.

The client device 406 is representative of a plurality of client devices406 that may be coupled to the network 412. The client device 406 maycomprise, for example, a processor-based system such as a computersystem. Such a computer system may be embodied in the form of a desktopcomputer, a laptop computer, personal digital assistants, cellulartelephones, smartphones, set-top boxes, music players, web pads, tabletcomputer systems, game consoles, electronic book readers, smartwatches,head mounted displays, voice interface devices, or other devices. Theclient device 406 may include a display comprising, for example, one ormore devices such as liquid crystal display (LCD) displays, gasplasma-based flat panel displays, organic light emitting diode (OLED)displays, electrophoretic ink (E ink) displays, LCD projectors, or othertypes of display devices, etc.

The client device 406 may be configured to execute various applicationssuch as a client application 436 and/or other applications. The clientapplication 436 may be executed in a client device 406, for example, toaccess network content served up by the computing environment 403 and/orother servers, thereby rendering a user interface on the display. Tothis end, the client application 436 may comprise, for example, abrowser, a dedicated application, etc., and the user interface maycomprise a network page, an application screen, etc. The client device406 may be configured to execute applications beyond the clientapplication 436 such as, for example, email applications, socialnetworking applications, word processors, spreadsheets, and/or otherapplications.

In some embodiments, the spectrum reservation service 410 providesreservations of frequency spectrum for customers' use in RANs 409. Inone scenario, the spectrum reservation service 410 is operated by anentity, such as a third party, to manage reservations and coexistence inpublicly accessible spectrum. One example of such spectrum may be theCitizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS). In another scenario, thespectrum reservation service 410 is operated by a telecommunicationsservice provider in order to sell or sublicense portions of spectrumowned or licensed by the provider.

Referring next to FIG. 5 , shown is a flowchart that provides oneexample of the operation of a portion of the RBN management service 424according to various embodiments. It is understood that the flowchart ofFIG. 5 provides merely an example of the many different types offunctional arrangements that may be employed to implement the operationof the portion of the RBN management service 424 as described herein. Asan alternative, the flowchart of FIG. 5 may be viewed as depicting anexample of elements of a method implemented in the computing environment403 (FIG. 4 ) according to one or more embodiments.

Beginning with box 503, the RBN management service 424 generates a userinterface for ordering or provisioning an RBN 103 (FIG. 1A). Forexample, the user interface may include components for specifying anetwork plan 439 (FIG. 4 ) or parameters for a network plan 439. Suchparameters may include, for example, a number of cells, a map or siteplan of the customer's premises or geographic area to be covered, atarget bandwidth, information about wireless devices 106 (FIG. 1A) orusers, a target minimum latency, a desired cost, a schedule of coverage(including start and end times, or periods of coverage in one or moreareas or portions of areas), one or more routes to be covered, and/orother parameters. The user interface may also facilitate specifying alist of user equipment (UE) identifiers that are permitted to connect tothe RBN 103. The user interface may include components for uploading oneor more data files that include this information. The user interface maybe sent as a network page or other network data over the network 412(FIG. 4 ) for rendering by a client application 436 (FIG. 4 ) executedin a client device 406 (FIG. 4 ). Alternatively, a client application436 may make one or more API calls in order to place an order for or toprovision an RBN 103 from a provider.

In box 506, the RBN management service 424 receives a request toprovision an RBN 103 from an organization. For example, a user maysubmit a form or otherwise interact with a user interface to cause arequest to be submitted. Alternatively, the client application 436 maymake one or more API calls in order to request to provision the RBN 103.

In box 507, the RBN management service 424 may determine one or moreRANs 409 (FIG. 4 ) to provide coverage in the specified areas or routesaccording to the time periods of desired coverage (or indefinitely, asthe case may be). The RANs 409 may be operated by a plurality ofdifferent communication service providers. To this end, the RBNmanagement service 424 may communicate with systems associated with theRANs 409 using the RAN interface 273 (FIG. 4 ) in order to determinecoverage availability in an area, pricing, QoS availability, and so on.In various scenarios, one or more of the RANs 409 may be operated by thecloud provider network 203 or a customer of the cloud provider network203, which may translate into lower cost of usage as compared to RANs409 operated by third-party communication service providers. The RBNmanagement service 424 may be configured to prefer using such RANs 409of the cloud provider network 203 or of the customer when such RANs 409are available and can provide the requested QoS. In some cases, theremay be a single RAN 409 that is able to provide coverage over the entirearea. In other cases, the use of multiple RANs 409 may be necessary tocover the entire area.

When multiple RANs 409 are available, the RBN management service 424 maydetermine the RAN 409 or RANs 409 to be used based upon factors such ascost, QoS, and so forth. It is noted that in some situations, cost maydominate QoS as a factor for RAN 409 selection. For example, highlatency and low bandwidth network connectivity may be acceptable for IoTdevice telemetry, and a RAN 409 having coverage with thosecharacteristics may be selected when the offering is at a low cost. Itis noted the cost for using a RAN 409 may depend on the location, aswell as the historical demand or a current demand seen by the RAN 409 atthe location. RANs 409 with higher demand may be avoided by the RBNmanagement service 424 as the higher demand may be associated with lowerQoS. Where cost is a factor, the resulting RBN 103 may be createddifferently than what would most optimally cover an area or would mostoptimally meet the requested QoS. In some cases, when multiple RANs 409are available, the RBN management service 424 may reserve capacity fromtwo or more RANs 409 in order to enhance coverage or provide greater QoSor reliability, particularly when user devices are able to connect withmultiple RANs 409 simultaneously to increase throughput.

In box 509, the RBN management service 424 provisions the desiredcapacity with the RAN(s) 409 that have been determined in box 507. Insome embodiments, the capacity may be reserved on a per-cell-site basis,for specified times or indefinitely. For example, where capacity isreserved for a route, capacity may be received at each cell site alongthe route at times at which user devices are predicted to be presentalong the route. The capacity may be released according to a schedulewhen the capacity is no longer necessary. Specific network slices may beprovisioned within the RAN(s) 409 in order to meet QoS requirements. Toprovision the desired capacity, the RBN management service 424 maycommunicate with systems of the RANs 409 via the RAN interface 273.

In box 512, the RBN management service 424 provisions a core network forthe RBN 103. In this regard, the RBN management service 424 allocates orinstantiates a number of network functions for the RBN 103. Examples ofsuch network functions are described in connection with FIG. 2B and caninclude a UPF 286 (FIG. 2B), core network functions 288 (AMF, NEF, SMF,and UDM) (FIG. 2B), DU/CU network functions 284 (FIG. 2B), and so on. Inone embodiment, all of the network functions of the core network areprovisioned in allocated computing capacity 421 (FIG. 4 ) that is partof a cloud provider network 203 (FIG. 2A). In some embodiments, some orall of the network functions are provisioned within cloud providernetwork-managed PSEs 227 (FIG. 2A).

In provisioning the core network, the RBN management service 424 maycause customer workloads 469 (FIG. 4 ) to be transitioned off ofcomputing devices 418 (FIG. 4 ) or cloud provider network-managed PSEs227 to provide capacity for the network function workloads 466 (FIG. 4). The network function workloads 466 may be assigned to computingdevices 418 at locations in the cloud provider network 203 that areproximate to an area or location to be covered by the RBN 103, orproximate to an interconnection point for the RANs 409 that are used toprovide radio coverage. The locations of the network function workloads466 may be selected to minimize latency or to otherwise meet QoSparameters specified for the RBN 103.

In some cases, network function workloads 466 may be alreadyinstantiated within a cloud provider network 203 but currentlyunallocated to a customer. For example, a UPF 286 may be instantiatedfor a first RBN 103 that is subsequently terminated, and being currentlyunallocated, the UPF 286 may be available for allocation to a second RBN103. In such a situation, the RBN management service 424 may ascertainwhether the network function has sufficient capacity to serve the RBN103 being provisioned. For example, a UPF 286 may be instantiated on arelatively low resource computing device 418 or virtual machine instanceto serve one thousand user devices, and thus may be inadequate to serveten thousand user devices anticipated for a newly provisioned RBN 103.Conversely, another UPF 286 may be provisioned with too much computingcapacity, which would result in an inefficient use of resources ifallocated to the newly provisioned RBN 103. In some embodiments, networkfunctions may be shared among multiple RBNs 103.

In box 515, the RBN management service 424 may configure one or morenetwork slices for the radio-based network 103 that may providedifferentiated quality-of-service levels for different user devices,applications, or services. The quality-of-service levels may providedifferent latency, bandwidth/throughput, signal strength, reliability,and/or other service factors. For example, the customer may have a setof devices that require very low latency, so the RBN management service424 may configure a network slice that provides latency under athreshold for those devices. In another example, a firstquality-of-service level may be provided for a first application, and asecond quality-of-service level may be provided for a secondapplication.

In box 518, the RBN management service 424 activates the RBN 103. Invarious scenarios, the RBN 103 may be activated immediately oncecapacity is allocated, at a future start time, or according to aperiodic schedule. Also, portions of the RBN 103 covering a portion ofan area or route may be activated before others or according to aschedule. Thereafter, the operation of the portion of the RBN managementservice 424 ends.

Moving on to FIG. 6 , shown is a flowchart that provides one example ofthe operation of another portion of the RBN management service 424according to various embodiments. It is understood that the flowchart ofFIG. 6 provides merely an example of the many different types offunctional arrangements that may be employed to implement the operationof the portion of the RBN management service 424 as described herein. Asan alternative, the flowchart of FIG. 6 may be viewed as depicting anexample of elements of a method implemented in the computing environment403 (FIG. 4 ) according to one or more embodiments.

Beginning with box 603, the RBN management service 424 determines todeactivate an RBN 103 (FIG. 1A). For example, a customer may submit arequest via a user interface generated by the RBN management service 424to select an option to deactivate the RBN 103. Alternatively, the clientapplication 436 (FIG. 4 ) may make an API call to deactivate the RBN103. In some cases, the RBN management service 424 may determine todeactivate the RBN 103 or a portion of the RBN 103 according to an endtime, an expiration of a time period, or according to a schedule.

In box 606, the RBN management service 424 deactivates the RBN 103,thereby ending communications using the RBN 103 for any user devices. Inbox 609, the RBN management service 424 releases capacity (or a portionof the capacity) allocated from one or more RANs 409 (FIG. 4 ) to theRBN 103. To release the capacity, the RBN management service 424 maycommunicate with systems of the RANs 409 via the RAN interface 273 (FIG.4 ). In some cases, the RBN management service 424 may determine toretain the capacity or a portion of the capacity to be allocated laterto the same RBN 103 upon reactivation or a different RBN 103. In otherwords, there may be efficiencies or cost reductions associated withmaintaining a RAN capacity allocation, even if not currently used, inorder for the same to be allocated to a future RBN 103.

In box 612, the RBN management service 424 may deallocate and/orterminate core network resources previously used by the RBN 103. In somecases, the RBN management service 424 may determine to leave networkfunctions, such as UPFs 286 (FIG. 2B) instantiated and running, so thatthe network functions may be reallocated to future RBNs 103. In otherwords, there may be a cost associated with decommissioning orterminating the network function instance, and a cost associated withinstantiating the network function instance, such that it is moreefficient to keep an unallocated network function instance running. Inother scenarios, it may make most sense to terminate the networkfunction instance or other core network resources that are no longerbeing used. If an RBN 103 is associated with a schedule, the next starttime may be used in determining whether to leave resources such asnetwork function instances running but unused. Thereafter, the operationof the portion of the RBN management service 424 ends.

Continuing to FIG. 7 , shown is a flowchart that provides one example ofthe operation of another portion of the RBN management service 424according to various embodiments. It is understood that the flowchart ofFIG. 7 provides merely an example of the many different types offunctional arrangements that may be employed to implement the operationof the other portion of the RBN management service 424 as describedherein. As an alternative, the flowchart of FIG. 7 may be viewed asdepicting an example of elements of a method implemented in thecomputing environment 403 (FIG. 4 ) according to one or moreembodiments.

Beginning with box 703, the RBN management service 424 monitors theperformance and utilization metrics of the RBN 103 (FIG. 1A). Forexample, the RBN management service 424 may gather RBN metrics 451 (FIG.4 ) relating to dropped packets, latency values, bandwidth utilization,signal strength, interference, and so on, during the operation of theRBN 103. In box 706, the RBN management service 424 determines to modifythe RBN 103 based at least in part on the performance metrics and/orutilization metrics and/or a customer request to modify the RBN 103. Forexample, the RBN management service 424 may determine that the observedperformance falls beneath a minimum threshold, or that the observedutilization exceeds a maximum threshold. In such a case, the RBNmanagement service 424 may automatically scale a quantity of a VMinstance, container, function, or other allocated computing capacity 421(FIG. 4 ) performing a network function in the RBN 103. Alternatively, acustomer may submit a request via a user interface or API to modify theRBN 103. Such a request may include OSS and BSS management requests tospecify a level of access for specific devices or groups of devices onthe RBN 103. The RBN management service 424 can run network bandwidthand validation tests to provide monitoring and alert functionality forfull visibility of how the RBN 103 is being used.

In box 709, the RBN management service 424 updated RAN capacityrequirements. This may involve allocating additional capacity withexisting RANs 409 (FIG. 4 ) that are used, allocating capacity withdifferent RANs 409, or replacing current capacity in one RAN 409 withcapacity in another RAN 409. This may also involve covering a differentcoverage area or route than what was originally provisioned for the RBN103. In some cases, the RBN management service 424 may switch reliancefrom RANs 409 of third-party communication service providers to RANs 409of the cloud network provider 203 or of the customer when capacity insuch RANs 409 becomes available or is able to meet current QoSrequirements. The RBN management service 424 may also generally switchRANs 409 in order to achieve lower cost or higher QoS.

In box 712, the RBN management service 424 provisions the updatedcapacity with the RAN(s) 409 that have been determined in box 709. Insome embodiments, the capacity may be reserved on a per-cell-site basis,for specified times or indefinitely. For example, where capacity isreserved for a route, capacity may be received at each cell site alongthe route at times in which user devices are predicted to be presentalong the route. The capacity may be released according to a schedulewhen the capacity is no longer necessary. Specific network slices may beprovisioned within the RAN(s) 409 in order to meet QoS requirements. Toprovision the desired capacity (and also to release capacity that may nolonger be required in view of an updated capacity allocation), the RBNmanagement service 424 may communicate with systems of the RANs 409 viathe RAN interface 273 (FIG. 4 ).

In box 715, the RBN management service 424 determines updated corenetwork requirements. Based upon the modification, computing resourcesin the cloud provider network 203 (FIG. 2A) that are dedicated to thecore network may need to be scaled up or down, or potentially relocatedwithin the cloud provider network 203, such as either toward or awayfrom a provider substrate extension 224 (FIG. 2A) or to a differentregion 306 (FIG. 3 ).

In box 718, the RBN management service 424 provisions the updated corenetwork, which may include instantiating additional network functions,replacing existing network functions with others of a different scale,terminating existing network functions, relocating network functions,and/or other changes. Deallocated network function instances may be keptrunning for purposes of more efficient allocation to other RBNs 103 orto the same RBN 103 in the future.

In box 730, the RBN management service 424 activates the modified RBN103. Thereafter, the operation of the portion of the RBN managementservice 424 ends.

With reference to FIG. 8 , shown is a schematic block diagram of thecomputing environment 403 according to an embodiment of the presentdisclosure. The computing environment 403 includes one or more computingdevices 800. Each computing device 800 includes at least one processorcircuit, for example, having a processor 803 and a memory 806, both ofwhich are coupled to a local interface 809. To this end, each computingdevice 800 may comprise, for example, at least one server computer orlike device. The local interface 809 may comprise, for example, a databus with an accompanying address/control bus or other bus structure ascan be appreciated.

Stored in the memory 806 are both data and several components that areexecutable by the processor 803. In particular, stored in the memory 806and executable by the processor 803 are the RBN management service 424,the capacity management service 433, the RAN interface 273 andpotentially other applications. Also stored in the memory 806 may be adata store 415 and other data. In addition, an operating system may bestored in the memory 806 and executable by the processor 803.

It is understood that there may be other applications that are stored inthe memory 806 and are executable by the processor 803 as can beappreciated. Where any component discussed herein is implemented in theform of software, any one of a number of programming languages may beemployed such as, for example, C, C++, C#, Objective C, Java®,JavaScript®, Perl, PHP, Visual Basic®, Python®, Ruby, Flash®, or otherprogramming languages.

A number of software components are stored in the memory 806 and areexecutable by the processor 803. In this respect, the term “executable”means a program file that is in a form that can ultimately be run by theprocessor 803. Examples of executable programs may be, for example, acompiled program that can be translated into machine code in a formatthat can be loaded into a random access portion of the memory 806 andrun by the processor 803, source code that may be expressed in properformat such as object code that is capable of being loaded into a randomaccess portion of the memory 806 and executed by the processor 803, orsource code that may be interpreted by another executable program togenerate instructions in a random access portion of the memory 806 to beexecuted by the processor 803, etc. An executable program may be storedin any portion or component of the memory 806 including, for example,random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), hard drive,solid-state drive, USB flash drive, memory card, optical disc such ascompact disc (CD) or digital versatile disc (DVD), floppy disk, magnetictape, or other memory components.

The memory 806 is defined herein as including both volatile andnonvolatile memory and data storage components. Volatile components arethose that do not retain data values upon loss of power. Nonvolatilecomponents are those that retain data upon a loss of power. Thus, thememory 806 may comprise, for example, random access memory (RAM),read-only memory (ROM), hard disk drives, solid-state drives, USB flashdrives, memory cards accessed via a memory card reader, floppy disksaccessed via an associated floppy disk drive, optical discs accessed viaan optical disc drive, magnetic tapes accessed via an appropriate tapedrive, and/or other memory components, or a combination of any two ormore of these memory components. In addition, the RAM may comprise, forexample, static random access memory (SRAM), dynamic random accessmemory (DRAM), or magnetic random access memory (MRAM) and other suchdevices. The ROM may comprise, for example, a programmable read-onlymemory (PROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), anelectrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), or otherlike memory device.

Also, the processor 803 may represent multiple processors 803 and/ormultiple processor cores and the memory 806 may represent multiplememories 806 that operate in parallel processing circuits, respectively.In such a case, the local interface 809 may be an appropriate networkthat facilitates communication between any two of the multipleprocessors 803, between any processor 803 and any of the memories 806,or between any two of the memories 806, etc. The local interface 809 maycomprise additional systems designed to coordinate this communication,including, for example, performing load balancing. The processor 803 maybe of electrical or of some other available construction.

Although the RBN management service 424, the RAN interface 273, thecapacity management service 433, and other various systems describedherein may be embodied in software or code executed by general purposehardware as discussed above, as an alternative the same may also beembodied in dedicated hardware or a combination of software/generalpurpose hardware and dedicated hardware. If embodied in dedicatedhardware, each can be implemented as a circuit or state machine thatemploys any one of or a combination of a number of technologies. Thesetechnologies may include, but are not limited to, discrete logiccircuits having logic gates for implementing various logic functionsupon an application of one or more data signals, application specificintegrated circuits (ASICs) having appropriate logic gates,field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), or other components, etc. Suchtechnologies are generally well known by those skilled in the art and,consequently, are not described in detail herein.

The flowcharts of FIGS. 5-7 show the functionality and operation of animplementation of portions of the RBN management service 424. Ifembodied in software, each block may represent a module, segment, orportion of code that comprises program instructions to implement thespecified logical function(s). The program instructions may be embodiedin the form of source code that comprises human-readable statementswritten in a programming language or machine code that comprisesnumerical instructions recognizable by a suitable execution system suchas a processor 803 in a computer system or other system. The machinecode may be converted from the source code, etc. If embodied inhardware, each block may represent a circuit or a number ofinterconnected circuits to implement the specified logical function(s).

Although the flowcharts of FIGS. 5-7 show a specific order of execution,it is understood that the order of execution may differ from that whichis depicted. For example, the order of execution of two or more blocksmay be scrambled relative to the order shown. Also, two or more blocksshown in succession in FIGS. 5-7 may be executed concurrently or withpartial concurrence. Further, in some embodiments, one or more of theblocks shown in FIGS. 5-7 may be skipped or omitted. In addition, anynumber of counters, state variables, warning semaphores, or messagesmight be added to the logical flow described herein, for purposes ofenhanced utility, accounting, performance measurement, or providingtroubleshooting aids, etc. It is understood that all such variations arewithin the scope of the present disclosure.

Also, any logic or application described herein, including the RBNmanagement service 424, the RAN interface 273, and the capacitymanagement service 433, that comprises software or code can be embodiedin any non-transitory computer-readable medium for use by or inconnection with an instruction execution system such as, for example, aprocessor 803 in a computer system or other system. In this sense, thelogic may comprise, for example, statements including instructions anddeclarations that can be fetched from the computer-readable medium andexecuted by the instruction execution system. In the context of thepresent disclosure, a “computer-readable medium” can be any medium thatcan contain, store, or maintain the logic or application describedherein for use by or in connection with the instruction executionsystem.

The computer-readable medium can comprise any one of many physical mediasuch as, for example, magnetic, optical, or semiconductor media. Morespecific examples of a suitable computer-readable medium would include,but are not limited to, magnetic tapes, magnetic floppy diskettes,magnetic hard drives, memory cards, solid-state drives, USB flashdrives, or optical discs. Also, the computer-readable medium may be arandom access memory (RAM) including, for example, static random accessmemory (SRAM) and dynamic random access memory (DRAM), or magneticrandom access memory (MRAM). In addition, the computer-readable mediummay be a read-only memory (ROM), a programmable read-only memory (PROM),an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), an electricallyerasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), or other type of memorydevice.

Further, any logic or application described herein, including the RBNmanagement service 424, the RAN interface 273, and the capacitymanagement service 433, may be implemented and structured in a varietyof ways. For example, one or more applications described may beimplemented as modules or components of a single application. Further,one or more applications described herein may be executed in shared orseparate computing devices or a combination thereof. For example, aplurality of the applications described herein may execute in the samecomputing device 800, or in multiple computing devices 800 in the samecomputing environment 403.

Disjunctive language such as the phrase “at least one of X, Y, or Z,”unless specifically stated otherwise, is otherwise understood with thecontext as used in general to present that an item, term, etc., may beeither X, Y, or Z, or any combination thereof (e.g., X, Y, and/or Z).Thus, such disjunctive language is not generally intended to, and shouldnot, imply that certain embodiments require at least one of X, at leastone of Y, or at least one of Z to each be present.

It should be emphasized that the above-described embodiments of thepresent disclosure are merely possible examples of implementations setforth for a clear understanding of the principles of the disclosure.Many variations and modifications may be made to the above-describedembodiment(s) without departing substantially from the spirit andprinciples of the disclosure. All such modifications and variations areintended to be included herein within the scope of this disclosure andprotected by the following claims.

Therefore, the following is claimed:
 1. A system, comprising: a cloudprovider network; an application programming interface (API) to reservecapacity with a plurality of radio access networks, wherein at least twoof the plurality of radio access networks are operated by a plurality ofcommunication service providers; at least one computing device; andinstructions executable in the at least one computing device, whereinwhen executed the instructions cause the at least one computing deviceto at least: receive a request to provision a radio-based network tocover an area, the request specifying a list of user equipment (UE)identifiers permitted to access the radio-based network, the requestfurther specifying a quality-of-service requirement; determine a subsetof the plurality of radio access networks to provide a coverage meetingthe quality-of-service requirement for the area; provision, via the API,a capacity in at least one of: a distributed unit (DU) or a centralizedunit (CU) of the subset of the plurality of radio access networks forthe radio-based network to cover the area and meet thequality-of-service requirement; and provision at least a portion of acore network for the radio-based network in the cloud provider network,a quantity of resources of the cloud provider network being allocated tothe at least the portion of the core network in order to meet thequality-of-service requirement.
 2. The system of claim 1, wherein therequest specifies a schedule for the radio-based network to beperiodically provisioned and deallocated.
 3. The system of claim 2,wherein the schedule includes a first schedule for a first portion ofthe area, and a second schedule for a second portion of the area.
 4. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein when executed the instructions further causethe at least one computing device to at least scale the quantity ofresources in the cloud provider network allocated to the at least theportion of the core network based at least in part on thequality-of-service requirement.
 5. A computer-implemented method,comprising: receiving a request to provision a radio-based network tocover an area, the request specifying a list of user equipment (UE)identifiers permitted to access the radio-based network, the requestfurther specifying a quality-of-service requirement; determining atleast one radio access network operated by at least one communicationservice provider to provide coverage meeting the quality-of-servicerequirement for the area; provisioning a capacity in at least one of: adistributed unit or a centralized unit of the at least one radio accessnetwork for the radio-based network to cover the area and to meet thequality-of-service requirement; and provisioning at least a portion of acore network for the radio-based network in a cloud provider network, aquantity of resources of the cloud provider network being allocated tothe at least the portion of the core network in order to meet thequality-of-service requirement.
 6. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 5, wherein the request is an application programming interface(API) request.
 7. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, furthercomprising provisioning at least another portion of the core network forthe radio-based network in a provider substrate extension at an edgelocation of the cloud provider network.
 8. The method of claim 5,further comprising scaling the quantity of resources dedicated to the atleast the portion of the core network in the cloud provider network inorder to meet the quality-of-service requirement for the radio-basednetwork.
 9. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, furthercomprising transferring a workload executed in a provider substrateextension at an edge location of the cloud provider network in order toincrease the quantity of resources dedicated to a network function ofthe core network.
 10. The computer-implemented method of claim 5,wherein the request specifies a quality-of-service requirement, andprovisioning the capacity in the at least one radio access network forthe radio-based network to cover the area further comprises reserving anetwork slice having the quality-of-service requirement with the atleast one radio access network for the radio-based network.
 11. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 5, further comprising: receiving asubsequent request to terminate the radio-based network; releasing thecapacity in the at least one radio access network; and deallocating thecore network.
 12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, whereindeallocating the core network further comprises terminating one or moremachine instances executing a network function for the core network. 13.The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein deallocating thecore network further comprises reallocating a network function from thecore network to another core network of another radio-based network. 14.The computer-implemented method of claim 5, further comprisingdetermining the area based at least in part on a route specified by therequest.
 15. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, wherein therequest specifies a time period of coverage for at least a portion ofthe area, and provisioning the capacity in the at least one radio accessnetwork for the radio-based network to cover the area further comprisesprovisioning the capacity in the at least one radio access network forthe radio-based network to cover the at least the portion of the areafor the time period.
 16. The computer-implemented method of claim 5,wherein provisioning the at least the portion of the core network forthe radio-based network in the cloud provider network further comprises:identifying at least one instance of a network function in the cloudprovider network that is currently underutilized or unallocated; andallocating the at least one instance of the network function to the corenetwork for the radio-based network.
 17. The computer-implemented methodof claim 5, wherein determining the at least one radio access networkoperated by the at least one communication service provider that coversthe area further comprises: determining that a first radio accessnetwork of a first communication service provider covers a first portionof the area; determining that a second radio access network of a secondcommunication service provider covers a second portion of the area; andwherein provisioning the capacity in the at least one radio accessnetwork for the radio-based network to cover the area further comprises:provisioning a first capacity in the first radio access network for theradio-based network to cover the first portion of the area; andprovisioning a second capacity in the first radio access network for theradio-based network to cover the first portion of the area.
 18. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 5, wherein the at least one radioaccess network comprises a plurality of radio access networks operatedby a plurality of communication service providers, and provisioning thecapacity in the at least one radio access network for the radio-basednetwork to cover the area further comprises provisioning the capacity inthe plurality of radio access networks for the radio-based network toprovide concurrent coverage in at least a portion of the area.
 19. Anon-transitory computer-readable medium embodying instructionsexecutable in at least one computing device, wherein when executed theinstructions cause the at least one computing device to at least:receive a request to modify a radio-based network to cover an additionalarea for a specified time period, the request further specifying aquality-of-service requirement; determine at least one radio accessnetwork to provide a coverage meeting the quality-of-service requirementfor the additional area, the at least one radio access network beingoperated by at least one communication service provider; provision acapacity in at least one of: a distributed unit (DU) or a centralizedunit (CU) of the at least one radio access network for the radio-basednetwork to cover the additional area and meet the quality-of-servicerequirement for the specified time period; and provision at least aportion of a core network for the radio-based network in a location in acloud provider network based at least in part on a proximity to theadditional area, a quantity of resources of the cloud provider networkbeing allocated to the at least the portion of the core network in orderto meet the quality-of-service requirement.
 20. The non-transitorycomputer-readable medium of claim 19, wherein when executed theinstructions further cause the at least one computing device to at leastdeallocate the capacity in the at least one radio access network uponexpiration of the specified time period.